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Banker Who Knows Tech Plucked for Trump’s Economic Advisor

Gary Cohn, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head
the National Economic Council, spent more than 25 years in the investment
banking industry, a sector that, until recently, was widely rejected by Silicon
Valley tech startups hoping to keep their companies private for as long as
possible.

But the Goldman Sachs’ president and chief operating officer
has strong relationships with tech-giant clients like Uber’s co-founder Travis
Kalanick and Tesla Motors’ CEO Elon Musk. And his experience overseeing technology
integration into his investment bank’s operations has given him first-hand
knowledge of the issues facing the industry.

Trump’s selection of Cohn follows a string of nominations
for Cabinet and other high-level posts from traditional industries and the
military. That left the tech industry with potentially little representation in
the new administration, but bringing in Cohn changes the balance. The 56-year-old
banker built Silicon Valley ties in recent years, as growing tech
companies in need of capital overcame their historic distaste of Wall Street
and the notion of taking on shareholders.

Trump said
Cohn will serve as his top economic advisor. Traditionally, the head of the National Economic
Council advises the president on domestic and international economic
matters, coordinating the development of policy across agencies.

Cohn’s tech knowledge is also a result of the financial
industry’s shift out of analog. He has worked to develop Goldman Sachs’ digital
banking services, including an online lending platform. Cohn also touted the benefits of open
source software and cloud computing as a way to reduce costs, free up capital
and create new revenues for the bank at investor conferences.

“We are in many ways a technology firm, with about one
quarter of our employees in the technology division,” Cohn said at a June 2015
presentation.

Cohn seems to grasp some of the issues facing tech. As far
back as 2009, he questioned Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at a Goldman Sachs
technology and internet conference about Facebook’s strategies in such areas as
women in tech, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and advertising.

The tech industry’s ever-present cry for light-touch
regulation is also likely to resonate with Cohn, considering he told a Deutsche
Bank conference in May 2016 that regulatory hurdles have slowed his own bank’s build-out
of new platforms since 2015.

“Those bars just continue to get higher and higher,” Cohn
said, adding that encryption, data retention and regulatory approvals were
adding up to six months to a product’s time-to-market.

To be sure, as a presidential advisor, Cohn wouldn’t actually
write any new rules or regulations in the Trump administration. But he would
work across many agencies and Cabinet departments, including Treasury and Commerce,
both of which are involved in crafting guidelines and regulation for tech
industries, including financial technology. And the fintech world of using
computers and other technology to provide banking or other financial services
is a place Cohn knows well.

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